Rovman Powell was being honest when he admitted to being ‘disappointed’. After all, the West Indies fell short of making the semifinals of a home T20 World Cup, despite having looked as good as they have in recent times. And it must be a tough pill to swallow. But speaking after the defeat to South Africa, a result which confirmed Aiden Markram’s side as second semifinalist from Group 2, the West Indies captain also chose to look at the larger picture.
“We haven’t won the World Cup but there was a lot of improvement. There’s a lot of buzz around the Caribbean again about West Indies cricket. We have done some very good things over the last 12 months,” Powell said at the post-match presentation ceremony. “It’s good to see that some buzz is back in the Caribbean for cricket. Because we know [for] how long that had died down. Now people are rallying around the West Indies as they do. Now when we hear the anthem play as players, we feel something. I think that is heading in the right direction.
“When we turned up to all the venues, we started in Guyana and it was fantastic,” Powell elaborated further in his post-match press conference. “And then we moved to Trinidad with a sold-out crowd. We went to St. Lucia, which was also beautiful. And then we went to Barbados in a solo crowd again. To come into Antigua to see so many people around the Caribbean rallying around us, giving us a buzz is very, very important and it goes to show how important cricket is in the region in unifying the Caribbean islands.”
Powell called upon his team to continue the hard work and sustain the “buzz” they had managed to bring back to the Caribbean. “Now is where the work starts. It’s for us to continue to work as a group, still be tight, and hopefully, just hopefully, we can continue to climb the rankings and make the Caribbean people proud.
“I think when you look on a large scale, we haven’t won the World Cup. We aren’t in the semi-finals. [But] I think the cricket we have played in the last 12 months or so is commendable. Credit has to be given to the team. If you can take a year to move from number 9 to number 3 in the world, that’s tremendous work.”
West Indies’ match against South Africa was a virtual quarterfinal and there was a lot of noise locally around the fixture. Did the big emotions before the big game affect the way the West Indies played? “No, to be honest, the emotion was levelled,” Powell said. “Levelled in the sense where the guys left the hotel wanting to play for the people of the Caribbean, wanting to win. We just weren’t successful tonight and it’s sports. It’s a game of cricket and those things do happen.
“We are disappointed. We as players are disappointed because we think we had the personnel within our room to actually win a home World Cup. But having said that we have played good cricket, we have entertained them in patches, and it’s just for them to keep on supporting us. How important the support is in whatever you do. So, I would implore them to just keep on working with us, keep on supporting us. Over the last 12 months or so, we have played fantastic cricket. It’s maybe one of the first times a West Indies team is ranked number three in T20 in the world and that must say something.”
Powell hoped that his team’s eye-catching performances in this World Cup will serve as a motivation and inspire guys to play for the West Indies even as franchise cricket plays the disruptor.
“I think it’s always a case for me as a captain to continue to motivate guys to play for West Indies. The driving force of franchise cricket and the money that comes with franchise cricket make it always difficult for the West Indies… to field their best team. But I think it’s been good so far for the last year or two. Hopefully guys can always and will mainly choose to play for West Indies,” Powell said.
“[In] 24 months’ time, we have another shot at the World Cup. Hopefully guys here can continue playing and doing well in international cricket and franchise cricket. And when that time comes, we’ll have the same core of players trying to win a World Cup for the Caribbean.”
